14. Stranger Than Fiction

From monographs to novels

When I was younger, and I still had time to read for pleasure, I was wowed and amazed by the novels of science fiction John Brunner — Stand On Zanzibar (about over-population), The Sheep Look Up (about pollution). How do you write a novel about over-population, about pollution? You follow the lives of some heroes and anti-heroes as the battle with the powers that be, and you tell their story.

Brunner was a genius at weaving a tale from the fragmentary journeys of ordinary people to depict an entire society and its…